Nursing Comm Communication in a Collaborative Healthcare

Nursing Comm

Communication in a Collaborative Healthcare Context

Providing leadership in a healthcare context requires one skilled both as a manager and as a collaborator. The modern healthcare context is a highly collaborative environment in which medical professionals must work hand in hand with specialists, nurses, physicians, family members, physical therapists, mental health professional, administrators and the patients themselves in order to derive treatment of the highest quality. The discussion hereafter considers the implications of this collaborative environment to those serving in roles of leadership within the healthcare field with a particular focus on communication.

Communicating in the Collaborative Healthcare Context:

My consideration of communication in the healthcare context is taken from recent clinical experiences within which I interviewed an Advanced Practice Nurse, a doctorally prepared nurse and an ICU nurse manager. My time at the Pacific Institute of Nursing

Conference would yield a great many insights concerning the value of effective communication tactics in collaborative nursing scenarios. The nursing professional functions as linchpin in the healthcare process. The Registered Nurse (RN) will often function as a liaison between an array of intersecting parties and interests. Providing critical interactive care to the patient, offering direct reports to attending physicians and documenting engagements throughout the treatment process for review by administrative personnel, insurance companies, pharmacies, legal departments and a host of other interested parties, the communication skills of the RN are essential in conducting responsibilities inherent to the job.

So reports the research by Godbole (2009), which points out that at the most basic level, the well-being and psychological experience of the patient will depend a great deal on the communicational dexterity of the attending nurse. To this end, Godbole indicates that "nurses or any other type of care givers need to speak clearly first of all. Maintaining slow, even tone helps the patient to understand what they want to say. Once they put across the point, wait for the patient to respond. Nursing requires you to be slow and gentle, so not rushing thorough is one of the techniques for communicating effectively." (p. 1)

Indeed, the communication techniques employed here can be substantial to the way the patient experiences the healthcare facility and treatment process as a whole. Clarity and compassion are tantamount in this area of treatment. Particularly necessary skill sets include patience, tolerance and a capacity to empathize even with the most difficult of patients. Many times, the nursing professional will observe an individual in a deeply compromised physical and emotional state. This makes some patients susceptible to irritability, irrational temperament, manic mood swings and a host of other responses to adverse conditions. It falls upon the healthcare professional to help navigate the patient through this compromised state by communicating in a manner that demonstrates empathy, understanding and concern for the patient's well-being. A comforting, compassionate and emotionally present ear can often make a significant impact on the patient's mood and level of cooperation.

That said, interaction with patients reflects only the most immediate of communication responsibilities for the nursing professional. Beyond this, a number of technical communication responsibilities fall upon the RN and demand the development of certain written communication skills. So denotes the research by Schroyen (2003), which identifies technical communication as distinct from other forms of discourse or writing based on its purpose of providing information as concisely and objectively as possible to a closely targeted audience. Schroyen notes that for the RN in particular, this process is frequently marked by the demand to collaborate with other health professional in creating a single document or report. Such collaboration demands a particular compositional skill level and the ability to understand, respond to and synthesize with the composition work of other contributing professionals.

Schroyen goes on to indicate that those nurses who have attained a certain skill level with regard to written communication will often become important sources of knowledge in the development of critical healthcare research. The primacy of the role played by nurses at the forefront of our healthcare system converges with the imperative for documentation skills to create an array of written resources carrying great policy and perspective importance. Schroyen reports that nurses with the proper set of skills, "collaborate in public health organisations to write proposals for funding, reports on the services provided and memos to health care providers. Nurses may make submissions to government on health policy, either individually or in collaboration with their professional organisations. Nurses also contribute to health care audit teams." (p. 1)

This denotes that for the Registered Nurse or the developing healthcare professional, there is a great interest to promote proper compositional and communicational education. Indeed, technical writing is an important skill that can help the nurse to better perform the functions of his or her job while simultaneously making the individual healthcare professional more valuable to his or her organization or the field as a whole. This suggests that one supporting behavior that can be pursued by healthcare professionals at every level is an improved understanding of frequently used medical abbreviations, a refined knowledge of the standard operating procedures relating to medical documentation and a competent grasp on the language as a whole. This denotes that medical institutions such as hospitals and clinics could engage in systemically supportive behavior by promoting and proliferating training and education in these areas. This would help to create more universal standards where internal and external written communication is concerned. The result would be greater consistency and a lowered risk of medical error.